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It’s rare that I do anything crafty that doesn’t involve yarn or textiles, but Kathy and I were keen to try Decopatch at Bean and Brush, so after the usual tea and cake (of course!) we headed to their craft room!

Wondering what decopatch is? I think this picture will give you a good idea:

Yup, just as it looks – ripping up gorgeous printed paper into little random shaped pieces then sticking them to an object of your choosing with some glue! And the papers are mighty pretty…

I chose to decorate a box, kind of in the shape of the Taj Mahal, and Kathy sensibly chose a tissue box cover. We set to work and within about 2 minutes were quiet as mice and chilled; sticking and pasting and decorating! It’s so simple and really lovely and calming. Not much thought is required so a little chit chat and catching up along the way and look what we made…

Today I have had so much fun making a mess in a public place! It was my first experience of yarn bombing, and a first of my partners in crime: 2 Sarah’s and Kathy!

I know it’s not good to just cut to the chase, but above you’ll see one of our finished pieces on the back of a bench. One of the Sarah’s had to leave by the time this was taken but from left to right: moi (yes really! I must have had a good day if I’m happy to show a pic of li’l old me!), Sarah and Kathy.

The basic plan was to cover a bench or the back of a seat in the Waterside Plaza in Sale, south Manchester. We had some panels already made by others and a few other bits and pieces. My contribution was a pretty little piece made to look like a lawn with daisies on it.

There are loads and loads of pictures from today so I am going to put them all in a set on my flickr page and there are different ones on Kathy’s flickr too. I’ll put just a selection in this post. Do go and have a look, after you’ve read all of this, of course!

My favourite image from the day

Anyway, there were so many great moments – here are just a few of them:

Kathy coming over all hot and bothered when the local constabulary came to say hello!

The look of horror on Sarah’s face when I had to use a knitting needle to reach the owl out of a tree (I think she thought it would hurt him!!)

Spending hours and hours laughing in the sunshine while decorating trees with knitting and crochet! Who’d have thought it!

Trying to join the edges of pieces of knitting or crochet wrapped around a tree – it’s rather difficult I can tell you!!

Realising one of the trees had no leaves on it and crocheting some to make it look better.

The look on people’s faces when the realise what you are doing.

Stopping for tea and cake and more crochet at Bean and Brush (where Sarah works) and deciding to decorate their tree while we were there.

Plotting the next time!!

We did learn a few things too! Mainly that next time we will do it without being part of another event. Today there was a community event being set up while we were doing out thing. We got the impression that everyone thought we were there as part of the event, and thought we would stay to teach people to knit and crochet, which was never our plan on this ocassion.

And one other lesson, we spent a lot of time standing and admiring our handiwork! That probably isn’t the idea so next time we plant the bomb then get out of there, or at least stand back at a discreet distance and watch!

Supplies

Preparation!

Tree cosy (and it matches Kathy's cardi)

Public crochet

I whipped up a pocket for leaflets and Sarah gatecrashed an art class to make a label!

The day wouldn't have been compete without tea and cake (and more crochet)

After tea we anonymously passed by, and loved people hanging around our work!

…that I got this show back on the road! Anyone missed me? Anyone noticed I’ve been gone?

Time really does fly doesn’t it! All that time ago when I was last here I had just got a temporary job working on the UK Census 2011 and as soon as that started I was in a complete whirlwind (or more like a twister, earthquake and avalanche rolled into one) that didn’t let up. However, I absolutely loved the work and it finished a couple of weeks ago. I am rather sad that it finished but it did me a lot of good and it was a great experience doing something so different from what I’d done before and it has definitely put me back on the right track!

Back now to job hunting, crochet, time to myself, crochet, catching up with neglected friends and maybe even a bit of housework! Well, maybe not the last one there!

This is just a quick hello to ease myself back into things. More will follow with crochet, colour, usual tales of craftiness and of course buttons and tea! There will always be buttons and tea!!

There’s nothing like spending time with friends to make you feel better so that’s exactly what I’ve been doing this week!

Have you been to see The King’s Speech? It’s sooooo good! It’s really funny which I didn’t expect and it’s also really interesting. I am fascinated by the period in history between the two world wars too so I really enjoyed that. Colin Firth was brilliant in the lead role and I can really understand why he is winning awards for it! Another reason why it was so good to go to the cinema this week… my friend had a free ticket so we shared the cost of the other ticket! Bargain!

There’s also been a bit of yarn shopping!! I have been meaning to go to Black Sheep Wools, near Warrington, for ages and Kathy and I had spoken about going before Christmas but it was closed for refurbishment. It opened again last week so off we went. Oh, it’s sooooo good! (yes in this post everything is sooooo good’) It’s really big for a yarn shop and has a really good range of brands, prices and qualities of yarn. There are also lots of accessories and loads of embroidery and cross stitch things too. I didn’t go too mad – well, I’m a girl of limited means now aren’t I!!? I’ll show you what I bought another time, but here’s a peek in Kathy’s bag, and some pictures of the shop:

And then this afternoon there was cake! It is my friend Jayne’s birthday today so she invited lots of the girls round and had her 2 teenagers on tea and coffee making duty (I must say they did a sterling job!). Jayne had made lots of cakes: the victoria sponge was sooooo good and absolutely delicious. We all had a really good giggle! In fact after a couple of hours we had decided to set up our own version of the WI and meet fortnightly for carrot growing contests, trips out, reading groups, exhibitions and crafts. Mad but true!!!

Here’s the cake:

When things aren’t feeling very good for me I can find it too easy to stay indoors and shut myself away. That was fine when I still had to go to work every day, but now I could go days without having reason to go out. I’m still not sleeping very well so not 100% but hoping that with a bit of time I’ll start fully enjoying my time not working! So long as it doesn’t last too long that is!!

In the mail today there was nothing scary and no bills! Just two envelopes, one large and one small and both with lovely contents!

The large one contained two things I ordered from Pavi Yarns earlier this week. I am very jealous that fellow crocehteers across the pond seem to have so many more crochet magazines and yarns available to them, many of which aren’t available in the UK (I haven’t looked at shipping to the UK as I know that could be a slippery slope!). However, I really liked the look of the Interweave Crochet Accessories magazine, published last autumn and found it was stocked by Pavi Yarns in the UK.

I have made this collage below of my favourite projects from the magazine, which are all shots taken from the pages, showing just a few of the really lovely patterns it contains:

How much do I love all of these projects? LOTS!! And I have to say these are only a few of man interesting and lovely ones included. There is a great selection of winter accessories, including a few crochet socks which I have never tried. I don’t know which project I will chose first!! Which ones do you like? The only problem I foresee is matching UK available yarns with the patterns, but for most accessories this doesn’t matter too much as size isn’t critical.

Stashed in the envelope with the magazine were some tiny stitch markers that I have needed for a long time. Until now I have used plastic split rings which really just didn’t do the job adequately, so as a result I avoided using them and often relied on guess work! Not recommended! These little lockable ones by Clover look much more sensible!

What was in the little envelope? A homemade Christmas card with a beautiful crochet snowflake from my lovely blog friend Anca, at Happy Hang Around! Thanks Anca xx

I thought I’d show you some of the lovely owl things that I was given in the past few weeks for my birthday and for Christmas.

I’m a lucky gal as my friends and family are very good at choosing gifts for me that I love. And I love owls! Just look at all these lovely, snuggly, gorgeous owls:

There’s a hot water bottle in an owl cover, lavender filled owls and a bright blue owl purse, as well as the cutest owl cards.

I especially love the hot water bottle. I’m a massive fan of hot water bottles and take one to bed on all but the hottest nights of the year. I know that might sound mad, but I love to be cosy in my bed.

Now, while I’m on the subject of animals, there’s another that I have a fascination with. I can’t in truth say its a love fascination, more like a strange curiosity! Am I the only one in the world that finds pandas a bit weird? Caveman gave me this hugging panda salt and pepper set:

They have such strange block markings and they bumble around eating bamboo shoots while looking really quite sad!

If it ever came to light that pandas aren’t actually real I wouldn’t be at all surprised. You heard it here first!